Page 2 - Wanted : SEO professional / company

Bravo Hugo,

When we sign on new clients we have the following in our contract:

- It takes atleast 12 months to get a stable high ranking.
- It is very possible that their ranking will drop.
- It is very possible that they will get less search engine traffic.
- It is very possible that they will make less sales.
- We bill per hour worked, and for all external services we hire for the client.
- We will stop all futher work if a bill remains unpaid 2 weeks after the due date.

We would never sign on a client without all six points in the contract. Never.

That's a real eye opener.

Thanks for the feeback!

Potential clients with a closed mind and unrealistic expectations usually wind up spending money on some sheister who promises them the world.

Just remembered something. A guy I know had a local business that he converted from a chain of about 10 -15 stores to a web business selling the same stuff. I was asking him a lot of questions and he had suggested we use his SEO/ who after an initial fee was charging something like $50-$80/month. Just checked his serps.


He is 8th in google/down a bit from where he was months ago. Quickly looked at yahoo's linkdomain for my friend's site and #1 for a key phrase; #1 had 12,000 backlinks and the guy I know had something over 2,000. I'm sure in both cases a lot of those are internal pages.

Seems like lots of potential backlinks. These sites are PR 6 and PR 5. Come to think of it there must be tons of internal pages there.

Seems like lots of link volume for $50-80/month to me.

Dave

That sounds great except for two things:

1)What's his target search term? #8 is pretty good, but if you try and optimize a highly competitive term 2,000 internal backlinks will not cut it.

2)How long did it take them to achieve this. If you have a year or two to develop content and slowly settle into a good position for a marginal search term that's great. But if I try to tell my seo prospects that they'll have a 1 year turnaround guess what...see you later potential client!
My prospects want results yesterday, and I don't feel that simply acquiring lots of internal backlinks will cut it.

good post sorvoja ........


i agree with you completely.....

I agree, and this is not confined to SEO. I am a retailer and have learned that you will not get their business. I have given these pain-in-the-butts my competitor's URL on several occasions. ;-)

Good for you. But, really, thinking closer about your terms, you will find it really unfair to the customer.

Think of it from the customer's point of view. He is buying a service. He is not getting a tangible product. If you can't guaratee a top placement, or more visitors, or more sales, then what is he paying his hard earned cash for?

Yes, making any guaratnees is unfair to you. But there has to be some measures to prove that you have really done something. Some measures that can really be seen and evaluated in case of a dispute.

Trying to hold all cards will simply make your clients fly to someone else who may not be as good as you. They can be worse, but at least they have some measures people can see (Or they can be just liars who would be going to rip off the client, and deface the SEO scene!)

Sorry. I really dont' mean any offense. Don't take it personally.

Hi msaad,

Thank you for your post you made some very valid points.


First of all if we promise nothing what are the customer paying for?


They are paying for our help and advice, and we are making their website more user and search engine friendly. All of this are clear improvements that could easily be verified by a third party. We can't promise traffic gain, better SERPs results or more sales because we can't control all of these outside factors. Normally the end result will be more traffic, better rankings, more sales but we can not (and nobody can) promise this. If I was a stockbroker it would be unetical for me to promise that a certain stock would rise 50 pts over the next three months, I might advice the client to buy the stock, but I can not promise the client anything. On the other hand if I was doing car repair, then I could promise the client that I would fix up his car nicely since I would be in control of more of the factors.



I know, but I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. If a clients want to make a million without working and get a sixpack without doing crunches and running 2 hours a day I am afraid someone will take advantage of them and charge them 399 USD a month for doing nothing.

His site has been up for several years. My knowledge is very limited about this. I don't think I can add much substance. He sells a reasonably competitive type of merchandise so I suspect there is a significant amount of competition. Its not my site and I don't feel comfortable describing details of his business in a forum.

Hugo

I STRONGLY agree to what you say. SEO is HARD to explain to a client. The problem is if you work hard and devote real time and effort and every little trick in 1 month for $79.95, and they pull the plug and say you did nothing because they dont see anything RIGHT AWAY

Hi,

In my experience it is always best to explain what you will be doing. I never say that I will increase their rankings, I say that I will make their website more relevant to the search terms that best fit their targeted demographics. Also I explain that changes in the SERPS and sales could take a long time to build up. Sure there have been many potensial clients who have walked away, but right now we got more than enough to do.

I can't understand how you could work a whole month for 79.95 USD, was that I typo? Also I never really liked the word trick when talking about SEO, our job is to make websites better not to do tricks. Tricks are not always a good long term strategy.

SEO could be hard to explain, normally we deal with business managers. They have a lot of training in risk assessment, but they lack the knowledge to really understand what will be done. But if you take your time, drops the sales talk and explains the SEO process as you would to an eager teenager they will normally get the information they need.

There are three rules for dealing with a client:
- Be open, drop the "yes sir!" attitude if you got it. Do not hide any problems. Go through the SEO process, over and over again, so you could be sure they understand it.
- Only promise whats in your power to deliver, and you can not deliver rankings, traffic or sales.
- You never make a sale if you beg, lie, or if you can't or won't give the client the information they need.

I'd be more than happy to discuss a positive plan via telephone....

PM, email, or telephone me anytime to discuss the details.

The outlined requirements seem to be fair.

These 3 are not easily discussed in forums.

- proof of other sites you have optimized
- description on how you plan to SEO our site
- your final price for the project.